Hello, I know it has been a couple days since this really should have happened, but you see, it's been smoky here and I just couldn't see my ass doing it. Literally. At least that makes a good story. The sad reality is that ultimately the reality of these last two days of the trip is much less interesting. By design, we were splitting the drive into two days, but in all other ways driving it straight through.
When last you saw us, we were staying the night at Bakers Hole Campground following a last minute change due to overbooking. Our story resumes here. 748 miles and two days from home. The adventure started in the middle of the night on this particular leg. As we were trying to stretch mileage, we were using less a/c and had rolled the windows down. File this away. As it was, we gassed up leaving West Yellowstone in preparation for the next morning [ed. note, previously I said that you could have seen us on a live stream through West Yellowstone, but in actuality the stream is from Jackson Hole. Speaking of Jackson Hole, there is a stretch of land heading out of town that is supposed to be Elk Central. We have been there 4 times and never seen elk one. Not even this time when we watched the compelling Ballad of Left Elk and Right Elk.]. Seeing as how we were heading to our next campground in Couer d'Alene, ID (6 hours, 42 minutes and 4 gas stops), we were going to head out fairly early in the morning. But first.
For the most part, we both had a restful night of sleep. Perhaps this was in part due to the cryosleep situation that we managed to achieve in the van through the genius lack of rolling up the windows. When I say cryosleep, I am only marginally exaggerating. I even hiked around the campground looking for sun in order to thaw out a little. This, being self inflicted, isn't even the most noteworthy part of our Bakers Hole experience.
Resetting the stage, it is important to remember that having been displaced from our reserved campsite, we were sent to another that was FCFS (first come, first served). In essence, we had a comparable site at FCFS Bakers Hole saved for us. This meant that we drove right in to a desirable electric hookup site. This is the important frame of reference. As I was trying to force-thaw from my cryosleep, I was approached by a guy from two sites down. While I'm not new to camping, I am new to RV-specific conventions, so as he was hustling my way, I was racking my brain for something that I may have done to raise this fellow's ire. There was nothing. When I had walked looking for sun, I even went the opposite direction of his camp. He clearly had something on his chest, though, so I waited as he approached. It turns out he was stalking our site. He inquired when we were leaving. I told him that if I had to guess, I'd say probably 9 or 9:30. I really had no idea, seeing as Laurie was still frozen in the van like Han Solo. He said "Can I have your site when you go?" In my head I said "Whatever dude, I won't be using it any more." but what I actually said was "Sure." He placed a camp chair out by the site marker which I presumed was some sort of RV camp convention, which then made it seem strange when the camp host showed up and took the chair. I digress, though. The dude got the site and presumably his chair. We got on the road.Speaking of digress, Fort George Brewery had said (during the time of broadcast CHC) they were setting up for to-home beer delivery in Oregon and Washington. If you were around for the video CHC, you know that this did not occur at that time. Instead we got a code to get a discount on a future order. Fast forward, we had ordered with the discount code and somehow I got it all twisted when the delivery was actually going to be made. So in the middle of Wyoming, we are trying to work that out as well, two days from home. Thanks Brianna and Karen for working to get all of that signed for.
Back to the show - by this point I was starting to feel fairly comfortable driving the van. By that I mean that I was largely holding things together and there was not a lot of being pushed around on the road by semis or wind gusts. At least I thought. As we're crossing the west side of Wyoming and the east side of Idaho, there were wind farms. Turns out, they put those things in places for a reason. The cross breezes in those areas (as well as on bridges over streams and rivers) were pretty intense. Really, that was the big eventful part of the drive to Coeur d'Alene outside of pushing the perceived limits on gas range here and there.
The campsite that we had reserved was actually just short of town. Like the Bakers Hole Campground, Wolf Lodge Campground was in earshot of the highway, but that didn't really seem to phase us too much. As we parked, we were told that we could use the space of the tent site next to us which had a fire ring, so we acquired some wood and made a fire. 7 days into a 7 day camping excursion, we finally did it (thanks to burn bans, not desire tbf). As Laurie was heading to the office for the wood, I had my first friendly "I have an RV. I see that you have an RV as well" type social exchange with a very kind couple in the site next to us. I had to excuse myself from that exchange, though, so that I could get our water and electric hooked up while there was still light to be had. We decided to try the propane stove in the van again. It lit up (Jekyll and Hyde, dudes) and so burgers were on. Having learned from the previous time it was happy to work, I started with the burgers themselves. When they were done, I moved on to bacon. In the middle of the first set of bacon, we returned to not gonna work mode, so half-cooked bacon went in the fridge... but there were burgers!
We played Skip-Bo again, ate burgers and fermented veggies from our Harvest Host, and had fire before hitting the hay for our last sleep on the road. In the morning, the trip across the state of Washington.
333 miles to home
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